One of the best roadtrip games of all time has to be Mad Libs. The boys have several Mad Libs flipbooks, and although they like to crank the gross factor off the charts as often as possible, I put up with it because I love the fact that my 1st graders are figuring out the difference between adjectives and adverbs!

They sometimes need help reading the finished story, but they love to fill in the blanks and take turns asking their brothers for words. Here are some of the most common:

• Adjective: smelly, stinky, gross
• Body part: intestines
• Noun: feet, skunk
• Verb: farting, burping

You get the drift. They know that I don’t like gross humor, but I overheard this conversation recently in the car:

No. 3: “Give me an adjective.”

No. 5, whispering: “p-o-o-p”

No. 3: “That’s not an adjective! That’s a noun!”

No. 2: “Or, it could be a verb.”

Omigoodness, it’s hard not to laugh with/at them sometimes.